The Ninth Buddha (6 page)

i He could have stayed in the Government guest-house, a small dak-bungalow just outside town, complete with potted plants and f ice and servants.
 
But that would have involved getting chitties in Calcutta and travelling as a Government official the last thing either Christopher or Winterpole wanted.
 
As far as the Governt ment of India was concerned, Christopher Wylam was a private , citizen visiting the hill country merely to relive some pleasant childhood memories and recover from his wife’s death.
 
If there was trouble and questions were asked, Mr.
 
Wylam would not officially exist.

When Christopher came downstairs, the rest-house was in turmoil.
 
A

party of Nepalese had arrived after a journey of almost three weeks

from Kathmandu.
 
They had come to find work in

India, in the tea-plantations round Darjeeling.
 
There were about a dozen of them, poor men in ragged clothes, farmers whose barley had failed that year, leaving them without enough food for the winter. They had come to the rest-house on the recommendation of a Nepalese trader whom they had met on their way, but now the bossy little landlady was telling them there was no room for so many.

There was little likelihood of the scene turning genuinely ugly such outbursts seldom went beyond words or, at the most, some harmless pushing and shoving.
 
But Christopher felt sorry for the men.
 
He had lived with peasants just like them in the past, and had travelled widely in Nepal: he could understand what it was that had forced them to leave their homes and families at this time of year to make such a hazardous and uncomfortable journey, carrying their provisions on their own backs.

What a contrast there was with his own journey to India.

Winterpole had arranged for Christopher to fly there in a Handley Page biplane by way of Egypt, Iraq and Persia.
 
While these men had been trudging through snow and ice, buffeted by high winds and in constant danger, he had flown like a bird across the world, his worst discomforts cramp and a little cold.

He felt an impulse to intervene, but checked himself just as he was about to step forward.
 
Instinct gave way before training: the rules of his trade said ‘do not draw attention to yourself, merge into the background and stay there, do nothing curious or out of character’.
 
He had come to Kalimpong in the guise of a poor English box-wallah from Calcutta a trader down on his luck and desperate for a new venture away from the scenes of his failure.

No-one would give such a man a second glance: he was a common enough sight in the doss-houses of the big cities and the flop-downs of the frontier bazaars.

Christopher turned away from the shouting peasants and went into the rest-house’s common room.
 
This was the centre of the house’s activities, where guests cooked their own food during the day and where those without bedrooms slept by night.

The room was dark and grimy and smelt of sweat and old food.

In the corners, bales of wool and gunny sacks filled with rice or barley were stacked up high.
 
By one wall, an old man and woman were cooking something over a small iron tripod.
 
Near them, under a greasy-looking blanket, someone else was trying to sleep.
 
A fly buzzed monotonously as it toured the room, out of season, dying, finding nothing of interest.
 
A girl’s voice singing came through the half-shuttered window.
 
She sang in a dreamy, faraway voice, a Bengali song about Krishna, simple but possessed:

Bondhur bdngshl bdje bujhi bipine Shamer bdngshi bdje bujhi bipine.

I hear my lover’s flute playing in the forest;

I hear the dark lord’s flute playing in the forest Christopher imagined the girl: pretty, dark-eyed, with tiny breasts and hair pulled tight in long plaits, like the images of Radha that hung on the walls of so many homes.
 
For a moment, he wondered what she was really like, singing in the alley outside as if her heart would break.
 
Then he called out, breaking the spell of her voice, and a boy came.

“Yes, sahib.
 
What do you want?”

“Tea.
 
I’d like some tea.”

“Ystrang?

“No, not bloody ystrang!
 
Weak tea, Indian-style.
 
And get me a chotapeg to go with it.”

“No whiskey here, sahib.
 
Sorry.”

“Then bloody get some, Abdul. Here,

take this.”
 
He tossed a grimy rupee to the boy.

“Step lively!
 
Juldi,juldi.”

The boy dashed out and Christopher leaned back against the wall.
 
He hated the role he had chosen to play, but he played it because it made him inconspicuous.
 
That sickened him more than anything that it was possible to be inconspicuous by being rude and that politeness to a native would have made him stand out like a sore thumb.

The fly buzzed and the girl’s voice continued outside, rising and ,

falling as she went about her chores.
 
Not since his arrival in “

Calcutta had Christopher had time to sit and think.
 
The journey had

been all rush and bustle: the hurried preparations for departure, the

clumsy, rushed farewells, the staggered flight from staging post to

staging post across the world, the hot, sleepless railway journey from

Calcutta to Siliguri, and finally the trek by pony to

Kalimpong.
 
No time to reflect on what he was doing.
 
No time to reconsider.
 
Just the world rushing past beneath him, water and sand and silent green valleys where time stood still.
 
And yet always a growing realization of what it was he had embarked on, a tight knot of fear in his chest that grew tighter and larger with every stage he travelled.

He had thought about William constantly, trying to understand how the

kidnapping could possibly fit into Zamyatin’s plans, whatever they

might be.
 
Apart from his own expedition to Kailas in search of Russian

agents, he could see no link between himself and this man.
 
Was William

no more than bait, intended to bring

Christopher to the Russian, for reasons he could not begin to guess?
 
That seemed unnecessarily elaborate and clumsy.
 
Not for the first time, he reflected that Winterpole might not be telling him the whole story, or even that what he had told him was largely fabrication.

The boy returned carrying a tray on which stood a cheap, battered teapot, a cracked cup, and a small glass of whiskey coloured liquid that Christopher took to be anything but whiskey.

There was a low wooden table nearby; the boy set the tray down and poured tea into the germ-laden cup.
 
It was strong, the way all Indians imagined Europeans liked to drink it.
 
Christopher shrugged: he would soon be drinking Tibetan tea made with salt and butter why turn up his nose at Darjeeling’s finest?

“It’s quiet outside,” he said.

“Have the Nepahs gone?”

“Yes, sahib.
 
Not nice people.
 
Very poor.
 
No room here for them.”

“Where will they go?”

The boy shrugged.
 
What did it matter where they went?
 
He had already consigned them to the nothingness his mind reserved for everyone of no immediate use to him.
 
He turned to go.

“Just a moment,” said Christopher.

“Can you tell me how to find the Knox Homes the orphanage” A shadow seemed to pass briefly across the boy’s face, then it was gone and he was smiling again.
 
Yet not really smiling.

“The orphanage, sahib?
 
What would you want with the orphanage?
 
There is nothing there, sahib, nothing but children.”

“Listen, Abdul, I asked for directions, not advice.
 
How do I find the place.”

Again that curious expression in the boy’s eyes, then he shrugged.

“It’s very easy, sahib.
 
Have you seen the tower of the church?”

Christopher nodded.
 
It was the most prominent landmark in Kalimpong.

“The orphanage is a red building beside the church.
 
A big building.

With many windows.
 
You will see it, sahib, once you are at the church.

Will that be all, sahib?”

Christopher nodded absently, and the boy turned again to go.

Then, in the doorway, half of his body caught in a pale shaft of sunlight, half in shadow, he turned back.

“Are you a Christian, sahib?”

Christopher hardly understood the question Just as all Indians were Hindus or Muslims to the uninitiated European, so all white people were Christians to all but a few Indians.

“I’m not sure,” Christopher replied, wondering if it was the right answer to give.

“Should I be?”

“I don’t know, sahib.
 
You don’t look like a missionary.”

Christopher frowned, then understood.

“You mean the orphanage?”

“Yes, sahib.”

Christopher shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I’m not a missionary.”

“But you are going to the Knox Homes.”

“Yes.
 
Do only missionaries go there?”

The boy shook his head.

“I don’t think so, sahib.
 
All sorts of people go there.
 
It’s a very ‘ important place.
 
Important people go there.”
 
Again that odd look.

“And you don’t think I look important enough or Christian enough to go there is that it?”

The boy shrugged.
 
He felt he had spoken out of turn.
 
It was never good to cross a European.

“I don’t know, sahib.
 
It’s none of my business.
 
Sorry, sahib.”

He turned and slipped into the waiting shadows.

“Boy,” called Christopher.
 
The boy returned.

“What’s your name, boy?”

, “Abdul,” the boy replied, mumbling the word as though it had a bad taste.

i “No, it isn’t.
 
You’re not a Muslim.
 
And even if you were, Abdul’s not a proper name.
 
Even I know that.
 
So what’s your name?”

“Lhaten, sahib.”

“Laten, eh?”
 
Christopher mispronounced the name deliberately.

“Very good, Laten.
 
I’ll call you if I need you.”

“Thank you, sahib.”

Lhaten glanced curiously at Christopher once more, then left.

Christopher sipped his tea.
 
It tasted vile.
 
He put the cup down and quaffed the cholapeg in a single swallow.
 
It wasn’t much better.

Outside, the girl had stopped singing.
 
The sound of men and animals from the bazaar had grown duller.
 
An afternoon silence had fallen over Kalimpong.
 
Christopher sighed as he put down the chipped whiskey glass.
 
He was back.

Mishig, the Mongol trade agent who had sent the messages to Calcutta, had disappeared.
 
According to George Frazer, the British Agent, he had returned to Kalimpong briefly, then left without warning about ten days earlier.
 
Frazer told Christopher what he could about the monk who had brought the original message out of Tibet.

He was called Tsewong.
 
It seemed that he had battled his way over the Nathu-la pass, down through Sikkim, and almost to the outskirts of Kalimpong before collapsing from exhaustion.
 
According to the report received by Frazer, he was found on the roadside by a passing farmer on the fourteenth of December feverish, delirious, and near to death.

The farmer had brought him on his cart to the orphanage, where the Reverend John Carpenter and his wife had cared for him until the Mission doctor returned from a visit to a nearby village.
 
The doctor had advised against Tsewong’s removal to the Presbyterian Hospital and had remained at the orphanage all that night.
 
The monk had died the next morning, apparently without saying anything intelligible.

Before handing the body over to the Tibetan agent, who was to arrange for his cremation, the doctor had searched the man’s pockets or, to be precise, the pouch formed by the fold of his robes, in which Tibetan men carry their personal possessions.

In the pouch, apart from the normal accompaniments of a lama - a wooden teacup (also used as a bowl from which to eat tsampa), the traditional metal water-bottle, normally hung from the sash, a yellow wooden rosary of one hundred and eight beads, a small gau or talisman-box and some medicinal herbs the doctor found a letter written in excellent and idiomatic English, asking ‘whomsoever it may concern’ to provide the bearer, Tsewong Gyaltsen, with every facility, since he travelled as the personal emissary of a Tibetan religious dignitary identified only as the “Dorje Lama’.

A second paper had been folded into the same packet as the letter: it contained only five lines of writing, but was in Tibetan and could not be deciphered by the doctor.
 
He had thought it best not to give either the letter or the paper to the Tibetan Agent along with the monk’s other possessions.
 
Instead, he showed them to Frazer, who had the paper translated by his munshi.
 
It turned out to be very simple: instructions on how to find the Mongol Trade Agent Mishig.